Just over a week ago I took the bold, some might say insane move and issued a case in the High Court against the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, The Mayor of London, the London Borough of Lambeth, The Shell International Petroleum Company and Braeburn Estates (which is a joint venture of Qatar and Canary Wharf Group) about the plans to redevelop the Shell Centre. For those of you unfamiliar with the case, the Shell Centre is the headquarters of Shell on the South Bank. It is in a prime location in the cultural heart of London, an area enjoyed by tens of millions a year. Unfortunately Shell have left the place to rot for the last ten years. What was a public square in the middle of it with a grade 1 listed fountain has been boarded up and is now overgrown with weeds coming out from between the paving stones. Shell have done this to build their case for redevelopment. Redevelopment may be no bad thing but the plans are dreadful. Seven new towers which will obliterate views of the South Bank. The towers are so tightly packed together that the 1/3 of the new homes will be below the minimum daylight standards. The little affordable housing is of course in the least desirable part of the site and there the homes will be in perpetual darkness. A new public square is proposed, smaller than the public space already on the site and constantly overshadowed. 99.7% of the square will receive less than two hours sunlight a day for most of the year. The developers are estimating that the sales price for the new homes will be an average of £1641 a square foot, or £1.5m for a two bedroom flat to you and me. They can sell such sub standard housing for such a high price because in reality none of it will be lived in. Instead it will be a giant washing machine for cash of unknown offshore origin. No reasonable person could believe that any of this can be for the benefit of London or Londoners, but unfortunately this is not an isolated case. From Tower Bridge to Battersea there has been a wild orgy of high rise luxury development at a time when ordinary Londoners are facing crushing rents. The question we must all ask ourselves is how has this been allowed to happen. It is set out in law that developments should only be approved if they meet the local development plan. Development plans speak many fine words about providing for the needs of London, improving open spaces, providing places for jobs, health and education. Yet across the city there is a weekly convoy of Bentleys and Jaguars filled with an army of highly paid consultants rolling into planning committees telling us all that the development plan is a unobtainable dream. In the real world it is just unaffordable, they say, choaking on their cigars. That any decision maker, from a local councillor, to the Mayor to the Secretary of State should spend a second entertaining this fiction is an outrage. Too many of them do, and the consequences are dreadful. My experience of the last few years of campaigning on these issues is that no amount of reasoning, rational argument or evidence can persuade the planners. The bureaucracy demands development. Of any kind, of any size, in any place. The rules will be twisted in any way possible to get the right result. At Shell the system has stretched to the point of absurdity. 7 tall towers directly behind the Royal Festival Hall, a grade 1 listed building were judged to cause no harm to the setting of it, because they were not visually intrusive and anyway they were not in the setting (they were apparently merely in the background). There was no harm to the setting of the Palace of Westminster because according to the inspector no building on the South Bank, no matter how tall or large could be in the setting of Westminster. Again, south of the river is the backdrop to Westminster, but not the setting. Consider that there is no reference to backdrop in planning policies and therefore no rules for what you can build in a backdrop, but strict controls on what you can build in a setting. The inspector refused to take evidence from objectors on the basis that it was not stapled, but accepted evidence from the developers weeks after the time limit for the submission of evidence, on the basis it was not evidence but just further information. Open space was deemed not to be open space because there was already planning permission for the land from a previous application (which had expired and therefore not legally possible to take forward). The low levels of affordable housing were justified by a deliberate underestimation of the value of the new buildings by £300m. This was revealed after an investors presentation was leaked to the opposition. When presented to the inquiry the inspector accepted the argument of the developer that it was OK for them to prepare two sets of figures and not tell the local authority about it. The Secretary of State agreed with all of the bizarre conclusions of his inspector, without any reasoning, despite the fact that on previous decisions he had come to precisely the opposite conclusions. For example, a previous scheme on another site further away from Shell and smaller was judged to have an unacceptable impact on the setting of the Royal Festival Hall. This bigger and closer scheme is however not in the setting. None of this is how it really should work, but if all the way up the chain of government no one cares, who will do anything about it? Thankfully under the Planning Acts anybody has the right (for a fee of course) to apply to the High Court and ask them to insist that the government applies the law. That means protecting listed buildings, and creating new buildings which meet the needs of our city (not Doha). It means that public authorities must respect and listen to evidence given in good faith by members of the public. The Secretary of State must give reasons why he disagrees with the evidence given to him. I have decided to exercise that right. It is by no means guaranteed to succeed, I am facing an army of some of the worlds most highly paid lawyers. But if successful, I hope save this part of the South Bank from being taken over by this madness and be an inspiration for others to see what can be done by using our justice system. Justice is a wonderful thing, we should use it more. I also hope that this campaign will have a legacy. One of the things that stood out to me during the last few weeks that there are many many groups that look after heritage and rural England, that fight campaigns, challenge decisions in the courts and lobby government. But there is no one group which is really set up to organise similar large scale campaigns to protect communities. The excellent Just Space justspace.org.uk are doing a superb job documenting the slow death of London and helping communities to represent and themselves. But what we need is a kind of Campaign for the Protection of Rural England for our cities. If anyone wants to help then please do get in touch. For now the best thing you can do is to talk about these issues with friends, write about them, blog about them, tweet about them, speak out about them and believe that there is an alternative. Many of you do already and everybody is hugely grateful for it. Hopefully we can stop the slow death of London. George
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 12:50:51 +0000
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